A product catalogue is a list of codes before it is a design.
A catalogue is printed to be kept for a year. It has to be right on the day it prints, and still useful once the prices move.
Start from the product list
Every product gets one row and one code, and the code is what a customer reads back to you on the phone. Two products under one code, or one product under two, is the mistake a reader finds first.
We check the list before any page is laid out: the names, the sizes, the pack, the photos that exist and the ones still missing.
Keep the prices out of the book
A catalogue is printed to last, and prices do not. Put them on a separate price list with a date on it, so a new price means a new sheet and not a reprint of every page.
Make two files, not one
The printer needs a file at full resolution with bleed, built to their own specification, which we ask for before the first page.
Customers need a lighter PDF they can open on a phone. Gmail refuses attachments over 25 MB, so the copy you email has to stay under that, or travel as a link.
Let the website and the catalogue share one list
Typed twice, the catalogue and the website disagree within a season. One product list that feeds both, the way our custom software keeps a shop's stock and its site in step, means a correction made once shows everywhere.
What we do and what the printer does
We lay out the catalogue and hand over files ready to print, in English, Italian or Albanian. The paper, the printing and the binding stay with your printer, who knows their machines better than we do.
Send us your product list as it stands today, even a spreadsheet, and we will tell you what it needs before a catalogue can be made from it. Get a free audit.
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